May 8, 2012
If the Rodney King beating
had happened a year ago, would anyone notice?
When King was beaten by Los
Angeles police officers after a high-speed chase in 1991, it became a national
scandal. The vast majority of Americans condemned the brutality. The officers
were acquitted of criminal charges. This verdict angered African-Americans who
saw it as proof of institutional racism, a reaction with which 80% of Los
Angeles residents sympathized. The verdict also sparked riots that engulfed the
city, taking fifty-three lives, injuring thousands, leaving behind a billion
dollars in property damage. Vast majorities of all races saw this lawless
response as completely unjustified.
To say the beating of King
elicited a reaction would be an understatement. It was the first major American
incident of gratuitous police violence caught on videotape and distributed for
the world to see. New technology had shed light on a dark side of public
institutions.
In the twenty-one years
since then, police brutality has continued to make the news. There are
high-profile cases that linger for months in the background of the public
consciousness. Particularly egregious cases, especially where the victim dies,
will even make headlines more than once—like that of Aiyana Stanley Jones, the
seven-year old sleeping on her couch in her Detroit home, set on fire by a
flash-grenade and shot in the head by police; or Oscar Grant, shot in the back
by a Bay Area officer while lying face down at a BART station on New Years Day,
2009.
Hundreds of Americans are
killed by police every year. Many are criminals. But a horrifying number are
non-threatening or even completely innocent—shot in their homes while
responding to a noise in the living room, unarmed but tazed to death over some
misunderstanding. Dozens of lesser cases of brutality, corruption, and criminal
incompetence occur and are publicized every day.
As the internet and
ubiquitous camera phones have reduced the cost of spreading information of
misconduct to nearly zero, we have arrived at a saturation of footage and
credible reports indicating gross police misconduct.
I am not trying to argue
that it is much more frequent than it used to be, although I think it probably
is. I am also not trying to argue some broader point about the police in
general based on any given ratio of good to bad police behavior. From a certain
standpoint, of course any injustice is too much. From a realistic standpoint,
there will be some injustice in any system. I think the United States could do
far better simply by enacting a few reforms, but that fundamental change
requires a whole rethinking of the state’s current relationship to law enforcement.
I consider this change desirable but here I am concerned with another matter. I
am concerned with the trajectory in American society, and especially with what
is to me one of the most troubling indications of a seemingly declining
culture.
Have we become desensitized
to police brutality? I return to my original question—if the Rodney King
beating were to happen today, would it go unnoticed?
I suspect the answer to
both questions is yes. There would hardly be the outrage there was 21 years
ago, because such incidents are recorded and made public all the time and have
become an accepted, if regrettable, part of modern life. Today, the Rodney King
video would become one of hundreds or thousands of other videos, readily
available, depicting state cruelty—perhaps getting its fifteen minutes of fame,
but failing to dominate even one news cycle in a country with a quickly
diminishing attention span.
The Orange County DA has
just released video footage of last year’s brutal beating of Kelly Thomas, an
unarmed, seemingly non-violent and mentally troubled homeless man hit with
batons, suffocated and tazed by half a dozen officers, crying out for mercy, crying
out for his father, before he is left lifeless in a pool of his own blood.
Thomas finally died five days later. His father, an ex-cop, refused to accept
$900,000 that the city of Fullerton offered him to make him go away.
This has certainly become something
of a story, but I would bet a pretty penny that it will be forgotten twenty-one
years from now, or perhaps even twenty-one days from now. Rodney King’s name
will still be remembered. Thomas’s plight is certainly not getting nearly the
attention that the death of Trayvon Martin got, a tragedy with considerably
more ambiguity surrounding it as to the facts of the case.
I often see the question
posed as to whether institutional racism has lessened much since the beating of
King. But one power dynamic is forgotten in all this—the relationship between
the state and mere subject. The Martin case, a tragedy concerning two private
individuals, was blown into a month-long national story largely because it
served to frame various popular narratives concerning racism, gun rights, and
self-defense.
At least as important as
any of these issues is the theme of the power of the state over individuals.
The King beating 21 years ago raised uncomfortable questions about what kind of
society and institutions we had. In two decades, it does not appear that we are
any closer to a satisfactory answer to the many questions raised about the
relationship between state power and the governed. To me those questions appear
as urgent and fundamental as ever as when that single video shocked the world
in 1991. Like a pebble in the eye, it was impossible to ignore. And yet, in the
face of an avalanche, I fear the public has gone blind.
Had enough? Write to the Speaker of the House, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515 and demand federal
hearings into the police problem in America.
Demand mandatory body cameras for cops, one strike rule on abuse, and a
permanent DOJ office on Police
Misconduct.